


Maybe Sprout Wings

by dharmaavocado



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 13:43:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14426628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dharmaavocado/pseuds/dharmaavocado
Summary: New York was young, but it still haunted itself, and there were days when the city made Magnus feel unbearably old.(Squint your eyes and hope real hard)





	Maybe Sprout Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Mountain Goats song of the same name.
> 
> So all the cool kids are doing post 3.05 fics, and here's mine.

On Court Street sat a house that didn’t exist. It was tucked away in a neighborhood that lost the battle to gentrification, and at a glance it appeared as if it belonged. Most things did, Magnus found, provided you didn’t look too close. 

He researched into the history of the building once, more out of curiosity than any real expectation he would find something scandalous. It served as a boarding house in the early 1900s, later renovated into several studios for the ever popular starving artists, and then ultimately demolished to make way for an overpriced loft much like the one he currently resided in. And yet, somehow, some stubborn, persistent piece of it remained. 

It wasn’t unusual to find such echoes in cities where years and people piled upon each other. London streets were more ghost than pavement, and you couldn’t walk two feet in St. Petersburg without tripping over an old memory that fed on spite. New York was young, but it still haunted itself, and there were days when the city made Magnus feel unbearably old. 

Movement in the upper window caught his attention, and Magnus checked the wards. They were fraying at the edges, a gentle unraveling that meant he was remiss in his duties. Well, strictly speaking, it wasn’t his duty anymore. By all rights it should be Lorenzo out here, delicately weaving his magic into the wards, ensuring an echo was all the building would remain. But Brooklyn was his through and through, and Magnus had never learned when to let go. 

It was possible to banish the building, of course, as hauntings were fickle things, but another one would rise up to take its place. Young New York may be, but its sins were numerous and it fed upon itself well. How very American of it, Magnus thought, and touched the first keystone. It was precise work requiring a light and deft touch, and when he was finished, gently easing his magic back, the building had settled into place, unassuming and safe. 

But for just a moment a woman stood at the window, hand upon the sill, and Magnus inclined his head as was proper. She bowed from the neck in return and then stepped out of view. Those residents who remained were safe from the pains of the living for another five few years, give or take. 

The night was clear with a warning bite of winter to the air, and so he forewent a portal and took the long way home. Three days ago Alec had left just after dawn as Magnus feigned sleep rather than risk another unspooling of sullen silence. Alec had sighed quietly, as if he knew what Magnus was doing, and brushed his knuckles along Magnus’ shoulder before letting himself out. 

It had been childish, perhaps, and petty, but Magnus was as he had always been, and he was so very tired of digging into his soft parts in hopes that Alec would stay. 

He could smell bacon just outside the door, and inside he found Alec at the stove, barefoot with shirt sleeves pushed to his elbows, messily folding over an omelet. The bacon was draining on paper towels beside the sink and there was a bowl of the last of the season’s strawberries sitting on the counter, and this would be his undoing, this terrible tenderness twining tightly about his ribs. 

“Hi,” he said, soft. “It smells good.” 

Alec shrugged. “It’s just an omelet. I hope you weren’t expecting anything fancy.” 

“I wasn’t expecting you at all,” Magnus said, because Alec had spent the last two nights at the Institute while Magnus had lain awake, listening to the past and present of Brooklyn move outside his window. 

“They can spare me a few hours.” Alec turned the heat down. “Did you know when Izzy was about eight the only thing she would eat were scrambled eggs? It drove our parents crazy, but I figured out you could trick her into eating vegetables if you mixed them in with a lot of cheese.” 

“So like a deconstructed omelet?” Magnus said. 

The heat from the stove sent Alec’s hair curling over his eyes. “I made her an omelet once, but she hated it. She said it didn’t look right. I had to mash it apart before she would eat it.” 

A decade ago, the High Warlock of Chicago had requested his help in quieting the tangled knot of ley lines. On that still and hot summer night as the heat seeped from the pavement into the air, the great fire swept through the streets once more. From the shore of Lake Michigan, they had watched the ghost of old Chicago burn, and they turned, they would have seen those who fled to the lake discover what lurked under the thrashing water, the hands clawing up from the silt. 

“Were you here when it happened?” he asked. 

“I was one of those in the lake,” the High Warlock answered as Chicago devoured itself again and again. 

“Well,” said Magnus, summoning a smile, “it smells delicious.” 

“You haven’t tried it yet, and if it’s bad you can always, you know.” Alec waved a hand over the pan. 

“Alexander—” 

“No, I'm sorry. I didn’t mean—” He sighed. “Can we not fight right now?” 

“All right,” Magnus agreed. They had spent the past week carefully not fighting. “Is everything okay?” 

For just a moment it looked as if Alec would brush it aside and they would continue on as they had been, unhappy but unsure of how to change that, but his Alexander straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin, and said, “I'm trying to be okay with it, but I don’t want to be something you regret.” 

“I could _never_ regret you.” 

“Not now,” Alec said, frustrated, “but later. I’ll grow old and my mind might go, and I don’t want you to have to carry all that. I don’t want to be someone you mourn.” 

Magnus once thought that Camille was his own great fire, driving him to the water to escape the flames. In her wake he had rebuilt himself wall by wall and road by road in hopes to never catch alight again. But he always had a gift for delusion, and the truth was that like New York and Chicago and London and St. Petersburg, Magnus haunted himself. 

“It doesn’t work like that,” he said, as careful as he could afford to be. “I can’t change what I am, Alexander, anymore than you can. Of course I’ll mourn you someday, but just because I will then doesn’t make what we’re building now any less meaningful. You have to know that.” 

“I know,” Alec said, reaching for him only to be brought up by the spatula he still held. “That doesn’t make it easier to know that I'm going to be die and you’re going to be alone again.” 

He cupped Alec’s dear face, brushing a thumb along his cheek. “But it is going to happen, and you have to learn how to live with that. And I can’t help you do that.” 

Alec leaned into his touch, eyes closed. “I'm trying,” he said softly before pulling back. “The bacon’s getting cold. Can you get the plates?” 

Magnus gathered plates and silverware, and said, “If I had a choice, I would grow old with you.” 

Alec turned the range off and said, “That doesn’t change anything.” 

Like all ghosts, one day Magnus will devour himself, but for now there was time for the two of them, and so he leaned in and pressed a kiss to the hinge of Alec’s jaw, his cheek, the corner of his eye. 

“No, it doesn’t,” he said, “but given the choice, I will always pick you.” 

Alec smiled then, and said, “You say that now, but you still haven’t tried the omelet.” 

Magnus kissed him again, softly and sweetly. “Well, we should rectify that immediately.” 

There will come a time when Magnus will stand on the shore of a great lake as all his walls and all his roads burn, and he will feel the echo of Alec’s touch along his cheek as he sinks into the water and the silt until he finally came to rest. 

But that was later. Now he sat to dinner, Alec’s hand in his, as a great tenderness cracked his ribs open, and he came thoroughly and completely undone. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come say on [tumblr](http://dharmaavocado.tumblr.com)


End file.
